19/08/2022
TODAY IS NATIONAL ORANGUTAN DAY!
Orangutans are the world’s largest tree-climbing mammal, spending over 90% of their lives high up in the forest canopy. They are known as the gardeners of the forest and play a vital role in seed dispersal and maintaining the health of the forest ecosystem. This is vitally important for people and a number of other species, including tigers, Asian elephants and Sumatran rhinos.
Orangutans have a very low reproductive rate, with females only reaching sexual maturity at around 10-15 years. They usually give birth to a single young (or occasionally twins), which stays with it’s mother for the first 7-11years of its life. This makes orang-utan populations highly vulnerable to excessive mortality, and means that populations take a long time to recover from population declines.
At one time the world’s wild orangutan populations included upward of hundreds of thousands of individuals, but current estimates indicate far fewer wild orangutans now remain with a current estimated population of just 104,700. Currently, the IUNC has classified both the Bornean and Sumatran Orangutan as Critically Endangered.
While the Bornean orangutan as a species is protected a majority of its range is not. According to the IUCN, about 20% of the orangutan range in Malaysia and 80% in Indonesia are not protected from illegal logging and hunting. Between 1999 and 2015 alone, experts estimate that over 100,000 Bornean orangutans were lost, with the most severe declines occurring in areas in which its habitat – particularly lowland forest in Borneo and Sumatra - was removed. IUCN experts predict that nearly 50,000 square miles of forest in Borneo could be lost by 2050 and upwards of 87,000 square miles by 2080 should the current annual rate of deforestation continue—resulting in the loss of over half of the current orangutan range on the island of Borneo over the next 50 years.
Orangutans are also threatened by illegal hunting and the effects of climate change, such as drought and fires. In 1983, wildfires in Kutai National Park, ravaged a significant portion of orangutan habitat. During another particularly devastating wildfire season over 1997 and 1998 in Kalimantan, an estimated 8,000 individual orangutans were killed. Wildfires have become an annual occurrence, claiming more and more habitat essential orang-utan habitat.
While many of these fires started accidentally, a vast majority of them begin when companies use fire to clear land on the cheap. In 2019, the Center for International Forestry Research found that the palm oil industry was responsible for 39% of forest loss in Borneo between 2000 and 2018.
Another threat is the illegal pet trade. Young orangutans fetch several hundreds of dollars and studies show that between 200 and 500 orangutans from Indonesian Borneo alone enter the pet trade every year
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Buy products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council to ensure that the wood have met the highest standard for environmental sustainability. The FSC label means that the trees were not harvested from rainforests where orangutans live but rather from third-party certified forests that are sustainability managed.
Palm oil is used in about half of all products found in grocery stores (it can even go by different names), so it can be pretty difficult to avoid. 12As a result, a number of certification bodies have arisen to trace more sustainable palm oil, such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Rainforest Alliance. Consider taking a minimalist approach and decrease your use of products made using palm oil, but if you can’t avoid it, then look for these sustainably certified labels when shopping.
Support these amazing organizations that help protect Bornean orangutans:
Orangutan Foundation International - founded in 1986 by Dr. Birute Mary Galdikas to support her work studying orangutans in the Tanjung Puting Reserve, Borneo. Her charity works to rescue and rehabilitate orangutans and release them back into the wild. The foundation also has programs that purchase land in Borneo for the specific purpose of orangutan conservation.
https://orangutan.org/
Borneo Orangutan Survival – Firstly, they save orangutans in immediate danger through rescue, rehabilitation, and re-introduction to protected rainforests. Secondly, and equally important, they protect and restore their wild habitat by working alongside the native communities bordering them.
https://borneoorangutansurvival.org/
Save the Orangutan Foundation - Set up in 2015 by Daniella Brandt, they raise awareness of the severe deforestation that is threatening the survival of orangutan populations in Borneo. Today, the charity raises funds to rescue vulnerable orangutans and creates public campaigns to raise awareness of their plight.
https://savetheorangutan.org/
The Orangutan Project - founded in 1998 by world-renowned orangutan expert Leif C***s as a result of his 30-year career working with orangutans. Today, the charity funds and supports organizations that work to address the critical issues facing fragmented orangutan populations.
https://www.theorangutanproject.org.uk/
The Sumatran Orangutan Society - founded in 2001 by Lucy Wisdom after she spent time at a Sumatran rehabilitation center for young orangutans, the charity is dedicated to saving the Sumatran orangutan and its forest habitat by tackling deforestation and working with local communities that depend on the rainforest.
https://www.orangutans-sos.org/
Orangutan Conservancy- founded in 1999 by a group of dedicated individuals who were passionate about saving Southeast Asia’s only great ape – the orangutan, the charity provides funding for various orangutan conservation projects and works to raise awareness of the plight of these critically endangered animals.
https://www.orangutan.com/
The Center For Great Apes - founded in 1993 by Patti Ragan after she took in and provided care for an infant orangutan that was intended to be sold to a circus performer. Today, the charity provides sanctuary to orphaned and handicapped chimpanzees and orangutans at its care center in Wauchula, Florida.
https://centerforgreatapes.org/
